Feedback from Mike our tutor, together with some initial thoughts, including the danger of not looking carefully at the background, and finding it unexpectedly intruding into our story.
Our group has feedback from Mike (our tutor), and I thought it might be interesting to share it with you together with commentary -- not because I want to argue with Mike or to score points, but because his feedback may well change how you watch the video (or indeed, reinforce how you already feel) and my comments back will -hopefully- explain how we ended up in that situation in the first place, and maybe how we prevent a recurrence.
For example, it never occured to us that the Beatle shot might look as if Dan is morphing into a fifth member of the group. It was just a poster on the wall, a rather innocent looking poster...now watch the film again... and we'll look more carefully at background walls, etcetera in future. Unless we actually want to create an effect, it may be that we'll default to blank walls wherever possible.
Mike commented that we needed some tension if Dan and Greg are actually robbing something, and asked what shots would have created this. The answer is that while I knocked on the door once, we should really have repeated the knock --perhaps more urgently—and then cut to Dan or Greg’s face and showed some fear to raise the tension.
Mike commented that the story opens with an office scene, then there's dialogue, then Dan comes through the door. None of this immediately signposts the story. Where is the door from? Does a new viewer know that the dialogue has just happened and that the robbery is ‘now’ and this is now a flashback?
The answer in short, is no. Greater clarity is needed. I know that Mike doesn't like captions like 'ten minutes later,' etc, but in this case if we were to use just one caption, it would be just as the voiceover argument kicks in.
Mike commented that the garden scene looks great but how might it be interpreted? The music said ‘creepy’ the light said ‘Police’? The music changes to more of a ‘police action theme’ and Dan hangs around in the garden for 50 seconds.
He’s right – we collectively fell in love with the scene, whereas we should have cut 30 seconds from the film. I'd never even thought of a blue light signifying police. I feel as if there are great chunks of film symbolism that I'm missing at the moment!
Mike said that the cut transition back is not obvious. We needed to establish the ‘device’ to make the story understandable to the audience, within the logic of the film. We see a ‘footfall’ then you cut to a CU of Dan’s face for the ‘realisation’ beat. ("Careful there’s a laugh here, possibly unintentional, when it looks like he’s joined the Beatles! We need to be aware here that 3 minutes into the film we don’t want to take the audience ‘out’ of the film.")
Oh Gawd, we never even thought that it might be taken that way...just goes to show what unintentional consequences come out of being too close to the film.
Mike said that the scenes in the SU needed better planning. It was very static and since the coverage is all quite wide the actors’ performance seemed rather stop/start.
Unfortunately that was all the footage we had. That scene was the first shooting that we did, and if we’d had our time over I’d probably have suggested that we shot it again. Hey ho; one always has 20/20 vision with hindsight.
The city centre scene is confusing initially since [the narrative] cut to an empty frame and Dan and Greg walk into shot. Don’t they need to step in? The previous 2 transitions the foot fell into shot. "It’s your device but you need to be consistent with it to aid audience comprehension."
He’s right. If you look at the step in on the street scene it’s different from the others.
Mike asked, "Why use the caption ‘The next day’. Why not straightaway? Maybe because Dan has a jacket on now? Maybe because they have swapped positions? Either way it weakens the cut. If you had a close up and then cut to the wide it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed."
The caption was to show that time had elapsed to have the idea. I’d never thought of that particular shot transition.
Mike commented, "If Olivia and Teagan were playing ‘maltesers’ in the same position as the fantasy, you could have visually made the same point without the lines “I’m so glad you saved me the other night.” This is really ‘on-the-nose’ dialogue, narration. "
Good point. For the rest, again it was the first afternoon’s shooting. It shows how much one can learn in just two days.
Mike commented that in the office scene Greg disappears and Dan says “ Greg, Where are you?” Mike notes that it’s a small office, and asked how we might have shown the “where are you Greg beat” without dialogue?
Panned around the office, of course. Easy to say now.
Mike concluded with "The film is a good group effort and a positive start of the module."
Nice to know, and the group have tried to learn as much as possible from the outing.
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